


Stage Incomplete

by madamebadger



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Banter, Characters Playing Video Games, Established Relationship, F/M, Humor, Mildly Fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 08:09:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamebadger/pseuds/madamebadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garrus thought that playing a video game or two would provide a good distraction for Shepard. After all, she badly needed some distractions.</p>
<p>(It never occurred to him that she would be so very <i>bad</i> at it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stage Incomplete

**Author's Note:**

> Set during Mass Effect 3, mild spoilers.

It was funny, Garrus reflected wryly, that with so many big things to worry about—the Fate of All Sentient Life for starters and on down from there—that it was the little things that were beginning to worry him, when it came to Shepard. The ashy smudges of exhaustion under her eyes, the way she winced whenever she slung a heavy bag over her right shoulder, the restless and broken nature of her sleep. She never complained about it, she never even _talked_ about it, but he slept with her more nights than not and so he noticed.

And today, for instance, sitting on the couch next to him and staring blankly at a datapad. She wasn’t really reading it, he’d realized: she hadn’t scrolled the page in almost five minutes. A quick glance confirmed that her eyes weren’t tracking over the words, but were fixed and a little glazed.

“Shepard,” he said, and wasn’t surprised when she jumped so violently at the interruption that she nearly dropped the datapad.

“What?” she asked.

“You were a million miles away,” Garrus said.

Shepard sighed, putting down the datapad and grinding the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“I imagine.” He laid a hand on her shoulder. “I was going to ask if you wanted to get something to eat.”

“Oh,” Shepard said, looking a little surprised at the suggestion.

Garrus’s mandibles flare reflexively in amusement. “Did you forget about little details like 'needing sustenance to survive' again?”

“Maybe,” Shepard said with a rueful sideways glance, and sighed. “I need to go talk to Ashley anyway. I’ll pick something up on the way.”

“And here I was thinking something more like a proper sitting-down meal, followed by a nap.”

“You’re welcome to get a nap, if you want.” It wasn’t sarcasm: Shepard genuinely meant it. It was one of her more admirable and also more infuriating traits, that she always, always took better care of her crew and her friends than she did of herself.

“I was thinking,” Garrus said dryly, “more of you than of me. I know you haven’t been sleeping well.”

“I’m fine,” Shepard said, pushing herself to her feet. Garrus wished she sounded more convincing. “Don’t worry, I’ll get something to eat. But I really do need to talk to Ash.” She leaned forward to kiss him on the forehead, a hybrid of the classic human and turian gestures of affection. And then she pulled on her hooded jacket and was gone, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

After a moment of thought, resolutely, he got to his feet and headed out to find Doctor Chakwas.

***

It took Shepard three times to go through the initial reports from Palaven—both out of pleasure that the krogan pushback was working, and in an attempt to find some way to make the krogan pushback _sustainable_ given the inherent limitations of levo species on a dextro world. A pulse had started at the base of her neck, a pulse that wasn’t yet pain but that was a reliable promise of a killer headache yet to come. She rubbed absently at the back of her neck in a probably-futile attempt to stave it off.

The door chimed and then swished open, saving her from a reflexive fourth read-through. Garrus stepped in, with the bag from one of the Citadel merchants slung over one finger. “You busy?”

“Yes, but what else is new? I can make some time.”

“Mm. I picked up something for you on the Citadel.” Garrus sounded entirely too pleased with himself for comfort, and Shepard felt a flash of amused wariness. “Doctor Chakwas and I were talking, and—”

“You two are scheming behind my back?” Both the wariness and the amusement shot up.

Garrus gave her a Look. “I’m an ex-cop and an ex-vigilante, and she’s a very good doctor. Of _course_ we were scheming. Scheming is what we _do_.”

“Uh-huh,” Shepard said, but she couldn’t help smiling a little. “You want to share what you were scheming about? And what it has to do with your shopping trip?”

“Well, I said I was concerned because you look tired recently.” Shepard opened her mouth. “Don’t interrupt, it’s true.” Shepard closed her mouth, but glared. Garrus continued, unfazed: “And she said that of course you’re tired, you’re clearly not getting enough sleep and you’re probably not letting yourself unwind, either.”

Shepard waved a hand, spinning her chair around to face her terminal again. “Never mind. I’ve heard this lecture before.”

“Let me finish,” Garrus said, coming around to sit next to her. Shepard sighed and gave him her best so-get-on-with-it raised eyebrows. “I asked if she’d prescribed tranquilizers or something and she said yes, but that she thought you weren’t taking them, which I already knew from watching you sleep. Or should I say, try to sleep.”

“They knock me out for eight full hours and make me groggy. I don’t need that right now—”

“—and anyway, she thought the problem wasn’t so much that you weren’t sleeping as that you weren’t getting any R-and-R. She says, I’m quoting here, ‘stress is the enemy of good rest, and if you are incapable of de-stressing you are likely to invite broken sleep, unrestful sleep, and nightmares. And furthermore Shepard is intelligent enough to know that already.’“ He dropped off the ‘audible quoting’ tone, and dropped his mandibles in what she knew was meant to be an expression of solemnity, but which was belied by their faint, amused quiver. “According to her, when she had you list the things you do to relax, you put ‘shooting Cerberus troops.’”

Shepard repressed a smile. She’d forgotten that little gem. “Well, in fairness, it _does_ improve my mood.”

“Shepard. ”

“And besides, I figured that putting ‘fucking the squad sniper’ on my leisure activities list would fall under ‘more information than Karin wants.’”

“ _Shepard_.”

Shepard sighed and spun her chair around to face him again. “Look, Garrus, I get that you’re worried about me. I appreciate that, I do. I worry about you!” The throb at the back of her neck was crawling slowly but steadily up her spine, intent on growing up to be a full-fledged headache. She pinched the bridge of her nose to stave it off. “But this is bigger than me, and it’s bigger than you. My health and well-being is secondary to the work that we’re doing. You know that. Feeling very mellow won’t do me much good once the Reapers catch up to us.”

“Yes,” Garrus said patiently, “but you’re not going to be much use to the war effort if you wear yourself out.” His voice lowered. “If Javik’s cycle is any indication, this war might last for years, or even _decades_. You can’t run on empty for decades, we both know that.”

She didn’t have a ready answer to that.

Garrus continued, “So… we tried to think of some fun things for you to do that you might be able to find time for and might even agree to. Something to take your mind off things. And, well, this one was easy to try.” He reached into the bag and pulled out a handful of…

…game codes?

Yes: she recognized the flat plastoid pieces as gift code chits, designed to allow the recipient to download the game to their own console. Each one was decorated with garish holographic art. There were five or six in his hand. 

“…You’re suggesting I play a _video game_?” Shepard said.

“I knew you’d say no to a vacation,” Garrus said, “and you’re probably right about that. And I know you’ve been having trouble focusing on a book or a movie.” Shepard felt her neck getting hot. She hadn’t been aware that her distractability was so obvious. “But,” Garrus continued, “I thought a game might be immersive enough to take your mind off things for a while. I used to play a lot when I was in C-Sec. Not any of these games, a first-person shooter from Palaven, I don’t think it ever had an export. But it always helped me relax.” His mandibles flared a little. “And I _know_ you’re too competitive for your own good, so…. ”

Shepard gave him a skeptical look, but curiosity won out. 

She began sorting through the cards. _“Galaxy of Fantasy_ ,” she read aloud from the first. The art was a garish image of an asari, holding a glowing blue staff over her head (and nearly falling out of her corset), riding an oversized varren. Shepard gave Garrus a raised-eyebrow look.

“Tali plays that one.” He grinned, a flash of teeth. “Well, she denies it, but I’m pretty sure it’s true. I heard her talking to Ken down in Engineering about running another raid to get the last piece of Moonwrath armor. ”

Shepard chuckled, but set it aside. Not really her style. _“Kepesh-Yakshi_ ,” she read off the next one, which was decorated by an abstract pattern of triangles and circles.

“Tactical game. Williams and Vega play.”

Shepard gave him a startled look. “Really?”

“Mm-hm. Down on the vidscreen in the lounge. Williams wins most of the time, but Vega’s catching up. Some of the crew come to watch, and they’ve started betting on it. The two of them also play….” Garrus reached over her to pick through the cards, and pulled one out with an image of two LOKI mechs locked in combat. Never mind that mechs pretty much never did any close-range fighting with each other, not when they could stand at a distance and rocket you to death. _“Shattered Eezo_. Fighting game with holographic mechs.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Shepard said. Thinking about it, it wasn’t that surprising that Ashley and James had a standing video game ‘date.’

“On a turian ship they’d just punch each other directly, which cuts out the middleman. But I admit they don’t wind up as bruised as we used to.”

“I think it’s just as well, yes,” Shepard said, mouth quirking up at one corner. She wasn’t sure who she thought would win in a real knock-down-drag-out fight between the two. James was taller, heavier, and—in terms of raw power—stronger than Ash, but Ashley was determined, devious when necessary, and possibly the most stubborn person Shepard knew, for good and ill. And she had a sneaking suspicion that James would pull his punches, which Ashley wouldn’t. It’d be a close one, either way. “Anyway, the last thing I need is either of them—let alone _both_ of them—laid up with sprains or something. You know humans are easily damaged compared to turians. We’re kind of squashy.”

Garrus leered. “I noticed.” Before she could respond, he flipped another game card at her. _“Grim Terminus Alliance_. I thought you might like that one, since you’re such a fan of hijacking ships. And also, a fan of crashing your vehicles into things.”

“Hey! ”

Garrus’ mandibles dropped and his browplates raised with amusement. “I’ll have you know, I _earned_ that remark. I was with you when you sailed off with two different Normandies. And I used to be way more afraid of rides in the Mako than I was of thresher maws, you know.”

Shepard couldn’t help a reminiscent chuckle. She’d enjoyed the Mako, but then, she was a sucker for roller coasters, too. “So we went off a few cliffs. The Mako is _made_ to go off cliffs.” She fished out the last gift chit, and felt her smile expand into a grin. _“N7 Code of Honor: Medal of Duty_?”

“Thought you might get a laugh out of that.”

Her grin widened further. “I thought the point was to do something _besides_ shoot at Cerberus to unwind?”

“I think doing it virtually is enough of a difference that it doesn’t count,” Garrus said dryly.

“I know which one I’m going to play,” Shepard said. “I mean, I’m _actual_ N7, right? This ought to be a piece of cake.”

***

It started well enough. Shepard made her character: a seven-foot, heavily-scarred human man. ( "Might as well not just play myself,” Shepard had explained at his surprised look. “I always wanted to be able to intimidate people to death.” He refrained from commenting that being five foot six and nice-looking had not prevented her from having that skill.)

Things, however, went rapidly downhill from there.

He got up to get them both a drink. By the time he returned, Shepard had completed the introductory cutscene… and was already stymied.

“I’m stuck in the wall,” she said, sounding more baffled than anything else.

He swung the chair around and sat backwards across it, handing her the other drink. “You’re not, actually,” he said. “Just jiggle the controller.”

“My shoulder is embedded in the wall. That doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with my character?”

“No, it’s just a clipping artifact.”

“…Clipping?”

He fumbled for an explanation, and finally came up with: “It means the game doesn’t know exactly where you leave off and the wall begins, basically.”

Shepard gave him a purely incredulous look. “…If the game doesn’t know, how the hell am I supposed to know?”

Garrus couldn’t figure out how to answer that. Fortunately, Shepard took that moment to jar her character free from the wall. Unfortunately, her wild manipulation of the controller sent her character careening across the catwalk, through the railing, and into the (for some reason entirely exposed) fusion reactor below.

Two minutes from ‘gameplay begins’ to ‘fiery death.’

He started to have a very bad feeling about this idea.

***

“Now I’m stuck in a stairwell. ”

Garrus took another swig of his drink, and then said (in, to Shepard’s feeling, an inappropriately incredulous tone), “What?”

“Look.” She pointed at the screen with her free hand. “I’m stuck in a stairwell. Literally, I’m running towards the wall and I can’t figure out how to stop running, let alone how to turn so I go up the stairs.” She leveled a narrow look at him, and then at the game. 

“Uh….”

“This is embarrassing.”

He shifted a little. “Okay, so… move around so you can see.” She wiggled her control stick. Nothing happened, except the game clipped (was that a verb? if you had clipping, could you clip?) again. Garrus sighed. “No, the other stick controls the camera. Move that one.”

Shepard wiggled the other control stick. She frowned at the screen. “I would like to point out that in my entire, lengthy, decorated N7 career, I have never gotten stuck in a stairwell even once.”

“Okay, so that’s the camera control—wait, what are you doing?”

She wasn’t doing anything that she was aware of, although her avatar was apparently flailing against the wall. Through clenched teeth, she said, “Not even _once_ , Garrus.”

The camera finally swung around, and her character lurched free of the wall. Garrus said, with inappropriate and probably forced cheer, “There, okay, that’s the right control.” She swung the control around, and after a moment he said, “Yes! Okay, see, just go in that direction.”

“I _am_ going in that direction.”

“No, you’re just looking in that direction, you have to—look, if you put on autorun—”

Shepard wrinkled her nose. Her character was standing still, which wasn’t getting anything much done but was better than plunging into fiery doom. “Last time I put it on autorun I ran into a fusion reactor.”

“Yes, well.” She could hear, almost audible, the sound of Garrus trying to think of a good answer to that. Finally, silently, he held out his hand. Shepard handed him the controller, and he freed her character from being permanently trapped in a badly-rendered stairwell. Then he handed it back.

Shepard obligingly put herself on autorun and ran straight into an enemy krogan mercenary, who promptly bit her in half. She stared at the screen. “Wait wait wait,” she said. “Krogans _threaten_ to eat you people the time, but they certainly can’t bite you in half through battle armor. Their teeth are too blunt. I speak from experience.”

“Maybe… you should restart,” Garrus said, sounding tired.

“They could gnaw on you for a while. That might work. But not with their helmets on.”

“I think you’re missing the point, Shepard.”

“I think this _game_ is missing the point.”

***

Garrus kept his mouth shut and his mandibles closed in his best poker face most of the time that Shepard was playing. He was smarter than to back-seat drive for anyone, but especially for anyone like Shepard. But still, when they hit the Elysium campaign—and she was just as unremittingly terrible as she had been in all the other campaigns—he couldn’t help it. The words blurted out of his mouth: “Weren’t you _at_ this battle? I real life, I mean.”

Shepard shot him a death glare, the kind that could freeze angry batarians in their tracks. “I’ll have you know, this is the most unrealistic thing ever.”

He put up a hand to cover the way his mandibles opened in an expression of pure, delighted amusement. “I wouldn’t say ‘ever.’”

“No, seriously, _ever_.” Shepard transferred her glare to the screen. “In real life you can’t fail to notice that you are out of ammo. And you also can’t _fail to notice that someone is repeatedly shooting you in the head_.” Her character’s health bar was critically low. No wonder….

“Well, okay,” Garrus said, hand still up to hide his expression, “but the game was trying to tell you—”

“Annnnd now I’m dead.”

“That’s what the little blinking light means, it means someone’s shooting you from that direction.”

Shepard shot him a look that could have slain rachni, never mind batarians. “Whose side are you on?”

Garrus kept his mouth shut.

***

Shepard could feel Garrus’ eyes on the back of her neck. She ignored it and squinted at the mini-map. She had to go north, or up, or whatever that was supposed to be, and then left, and….

Her avatar fell off the edge of a catwalk.

She hissed between her teeth and respawned.

In a soft, awed voice, Garrus said, “How are you so _bad_ at this?”

She clenched her jaw. “Garrus—”

“I mean, you’re the actual hero of Elysium, you’re the standard by which N7 marines are measured, you defeated Saren, you annihilated the Collectors. You _define_ badass. But you keep walking off cliffs, and you keep not noticing that people are using Singularity to blow you up. And you’re a biotic. I mean, in real life.”

“Thank you for pointing that out.”

He continued, blithely, “You are _amazingly_ terrible at this. It’s actually sort of impressive how terrible you are. There ought to be some kind of medal for the distance you’ve achieved between ‘what you can do in real life’ and ‘what you can do in the game.’“ He hesitated, then squinted at her. “—You’re not doing this on purpose to amuse me, are you?”

“ _No_.”

“Oh.”

Five minutes later she stepped on a land mine and died. After the fact, she realized that the steady red-and-black blinking and the high-pitched beep coming from the mine’s location was something she should have been paying attention to, but she’d been too busy scanning the horizon for nonexistent snipers.

She could _feel_ Garrus very loudly not commenting behind her.

***

Garrus had got up to fix himself another drink when he heard a scream of frustration, followed by the clatter of plastic on glass.

He stuck his head around the wall. Sure enough, there was Shepard, looking mulish, and the controller on the floor where she’d thrown it at the fishtank. On the holoscreen, her avatar lay sprawled in death, with the words “Resume? Restore? Quit?” floating above it.

“You’re going to scare the fish,” he said, mildly.

“They’ve seen worse.” Shepard looked like she wanted to swear a blue streak. Instead, she said, “I died again.”

“I see that.” Garrus eased back into his chair. “Maybe this wasn’t the best idea—”

“I am not going to let some stupid simulation of military life beat me. I am _not_.”

“Shepard—”

“I swear to god if I get stuck behind a door _one more time_ —”

“This was supposed to help you unwind,” Garrus said, lowering the harmonics of his voice to its most purring tones. “If it’s not doing that, maybe it’s time to find some _other_ way to relax you.”

Shepard either didn’t notice his innuendo or else she flat-out ignored it. “This thing is impossible.”

Garrus tried for more direct. “Then maybe you should stop and let me entertain you for a while.”

She didn’t unbend. “This was your idea, you know. You started it. You _know_ how much I hate losing.” She picked up the controller and jabbed the button to resume.

Garrus slipped around behind her chair. He knelt to bring them to more or less the same level—not easy with his leg-spurs, but possible—and slid his hands around the back of her chair to skim over her belly. (Consciously he knew that touching a human’s waist or belly didn’t mean the same thing as it did for a turian, but some things were too hardwired to be worth fighting. And the exquisite softness of her skin there, even through her shirt, made him shiver.) “Come on,” he said, his voice reverberating two-toned against her shoulder. “Surely you can think of better ways to blow off some steam?”

_That_ , at least, was obvious enough to get her attention. She bared her teeth without looking away from the game. “You know I hate backing down from a challenge.”

“Mm.” He nipped at the side of her throat. “I also know that you’re smart enough to make the best of a bad situation.”

She continued playing. He continued his attempt to lure her away, rubbing his forehead against the back of her shoulder, sliding a hand up to stroke her breast. After a minute or two of such attentions, he felt her snort with frustration. “Damn it, I just got nailed by another land mine, and it’s all your fault.”

“Very telling use of words,” he said. “‘Nailed.’“ 

“Ha ha,” she said, sounding breathless. “Very funny.”

“And it’s my fault, is it?” He could feel her pulse pick up in her throat, a reaction that called a similar rising of his own blood.

“I’m going to make you pay for this.”

“Oh yes, please,” he said, letting his breath gust over the nape of her neck. He rolled to his feet and caught her hand, pulled the controller free and set it down. “Make me pay.”

She looked over her shoulder at him, rolled her eyes. But she didn’t, he noticed, resist when he took her hand and led her toward the bed.

***

Garrus was smirking at Shepard as he towed her toward the bed, which should have annoyed her. She glanced at the terminal, whose holodisplay was showing her character inelegantly flattened to the landscape while ominous death music played, and allowed herself to be pulled.

More than one way to blow off steam, she thought, and pressed her lips together to stifle her grin.

When they paused at the bed’s side, she skimmed her hands up Garrus’ chest, rolling up his shirt to enjoy the slightly rough texture of his plates against the palm of her hands. It was always a little bit of a surprise how warm he was—just a few degrees above human standard, but still—and she loved the faint pliancy of his hide, firm but flexible like good leather.

“Shepard,” he purred in her ear, and then, “…seriously, though, how _are_ you so bad at that?”

She smacked his chest. “Do you want to get lucky tonight or not, Vakarian?”

“Mm,” he said. He dropped his head, nipping the join between her shoulder and her throat with his mouthplates. His mandibles brushed featherlight across her skin. “I think I’ll go with ‘yes.’”

“Then enough with the game jokes,” she said. She knew she sounded more angry than she felt, and knew he knew it from the low rumble of his laughter settling through his chest into hers.

She worked his shirt up over his head, baring him to her gaze. Familiarity had taught her to appreciate the alien aesthetics of his body: the pale-brown base color of his skin with its steel-silver metallic sheen, the depth of his chest and his narrow waist with its softer hide. The sculpted jut of his keelbone. The warm blue of his eyes.

He was looking at her fondly. She felt herself warming, despite her amused irritation at his meddling and at her own complete failure to master a game about _being an N7 marine_. Heat trembled down through her, thudding through her belly, settling with a deep pulsebeat between her legs: heat fueled by the unguarded affection in his gaze.

She smiled back at him. And then she planted a hand in the middle of his chest and shoved.

Garrus was clearly unprepared for an attack from that quarter. He fell straight back onto the bed. Turians were top-heavy thanks to their heavy bone cowls; while he struggled to get up, she crawled up onto the bed, straddled his hips, and pinned him with a hand at the top of his breastbone.

“You’re so unfair,” he complained.

“You got to watch me flail around helplessly with that game for an hour,” she said, “and I know you were laughing at me. Now it’s my turn.”

“I don’t think that’s—” he said, and then broke off when she opened his pants.

He was already half-hard, the blue-tinted tip of his cock nudging out of its keratin-shielded sheath. The sight sent a little quiver through her, down her spine to slick between her legs. Despite his loud protests to the contrary, she knew from both anecdote and experience that Garrus liked a woman who could push him around a little. He’d get all the way hard on his own in a few minutes, but Shepard decided suddenly that she didn’t want to wait, and slid down until she was straddling his knees and lowered her mouth to the slit in his sheath. She could just barely get her tongue around the slick tip, but it was enough.

“Ah!” Garrus said, his harmonic wavering in a way that she was, by now, entirely familiar with. “No fair, you aren’t even undressed—”

She lifted her head just far enough to say, “Just fifteen minutes ago you were counseling me to use ‘attacks of opportunity.’”

“I didn’t mean against _me_ —”

“Garrus. Are you actually complaining?”

“Ah. Hah.” She heard him swallow audibly. “…No.”

“Good,” she said, and lowered her mouth again.

Turian plates were coarse and tasted of metal, but his cock—hidden as it was most of the time—was neither. Its luxuriously smooth skin and slightly spicy taste made her throb. She teased the tip, the only thing she could reach, until with a gasp he everted so quick she had to jerk her head away to keep from being choked. Fully hard and unsheathed, he was long, curved, and deeply blue in a way that was completely alien—and yet, by now, also completely familiar to her. She rubbed her lips along his length, re-familiarizing herself by feel with his smooth ridges, squirming a little as her own arousal primed to the texture, the scent, the sight.

Then she sat up and stripped off her shirt, acutely aware of his greedy eyes on her. Her shirt and bra landed on top of his on the floor, and with a bit of exertion and some shimmying her pants and panties joined them.

“Shepard,” Garrus said, struggling up onto one elbow.

She didn’t reply, except to unceremoniously yank his pants down, over his hip-spurs and to his knees. He ran a hand up her inner thigh—his fingers weren’t as rough as the plates on the rest of him, just a pleasant velvety drag—and settled between her legs, rubbing her entrance, testing her carefully with the clawed tip of one finger. She batted his hand away, steadied his cock in her grip, and settled down over the tip.

Garrus’ groan vibrated as low as an earthquake, and she felt it through her thighs, up through her cunt, up through her body. She moaned in response—moaned, too, at his thick tip opening her. His hands slid up her body, lingering briefly on her waist and stomach and then moving higher to caress her breasts. Her nipples tightened under his insistent touch.

She set a pace that was fast and rough, fast and rough enough to work off the frustrations of dying twenty-seven times in a stupid game. And—if she was honest with herself—fast enough to work off other tensions too: of losing beloved comrades, of work that never had an end, of worry about the fate of everything. Here, now, with Garrus pinned beneath her thighs and caressing her breasts, filled and touched, warm and not alone, she could forget for a little while.

Garrus was big enough to stretch her out, so that she could feel each ridge of his cock as he fucked her—as she fucked him. She could feel, too, his moans, his gasps, his inarticulate murmurs too soft for the translator to pick up. His hands slicked down her sweaty torso to settle on her hips, holding tight, just as she planted her hands on his cowl to ride him rough, raw, hard.

She saw his eyes glaze, saw his tongue flick to taste the air in a primal gesture that he never made except during sex. She wondered what he could taste of her arousal, of her pleasure, of her pure need, satiated here with him. “Shepard,” he said, voice raspy and thin, “tell me you’re close.”

“Yes,” she said, sliding one hand down to touch her own clit. It took just a few seconds of that direct contact and then she was coming, lost in orgasm and shuddering over him, giving everything up.

His hands tightened on her hips, his talons leaving tiny pinpricks in her skin. She felt him swell and heard his inarticulate cry, two vocal cords flanging in strained harmony.

After a little while, panting and catching her breath, she slid off him—her eyes fluttered as he slipped out of her, still big even as he softened. She settled down next to him.

He grunted, sitting enough to pull his half-removed pants all the way off. Then he slipped an arm around her, pressing his mouthplates to her temple and flicking his tongue out to taste her skin.

“Well,” Shepard said, giddy and light with endorphins. “You did a crappy job finding me an extracurricular activity. But you did a great job taking my mind off things.”

“You’re welcome,” Garrus said.

*** 

Fifteen minutes later, just when Garrus had nearly drifted off into much-deserved sleep, Shepard sat bolt upright.

“Model ships!” she said.

“Wh-huh?” was Garrus’ articulate contribution to the conversation.

“Model ships. Model ships!” She glared at him.

“Are you having some kind of bizarre nightmare?” he asked. “Or an aneurysm or something?”

She smacked him on the cowl ridge. “I mean, _that’s_ what I should have told you and Chakwas was my relaxing hobby. Model ships!” She gestured vaguely at the display case above her personal terminal. “I’ve got almost all the Alliance fleet, and Tali’s going to see if she can get me some Migrant Fleet ship models to add, and I’m thinking about maybe doing the Hierarchy fleet next. I put them together myself. It’s very soothing.”

“That’s nice,” Garrus said around a yawn. “I’ll let the doctor know. Can I go back to sleep now?”

Shepard settled against his side once more. “And I collect fish, too,” she said. “I forgot that part. I have the little informational cards about all the species and everything. You two need to leave me alone, I obviously have enough recreational activities.”

“Shepard, if it weren’t for the fact that Traynor is too nice for her own good, those fish would have been dead weeks ago.”

“So I’m good at delegation,” Shepard said. She rested her cheek against the soft skin of his throat, and Garrus couldn’t resist purring. “There, see? I have hobbies. I’m well-rounded.”

Garrus thought about making a lewd joke about her well-rounded physique, and decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble. Instead, he said, “Great. I’ll buy you some more models. I love you. _Go back to sleep._ ”

To his enormous pleasure, she did. Within a few minutes, when he was sure she was sleeping deeply and comfortably, he did too.


End file.
